


a row of captured ghosts

by cryptidgay



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Compilation, F/F, Gen, M/M, Multi, Prompt Fic, info for each fic in the chapter notes!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-16 04:53:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 4,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29076663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cryptidgay/pseuds/cryptidgay
Summary: a collection of short prompt fics from my tumblr.featuring: allijay + reflections; derrick and jaylen + a record store; kenfinn + ascension; jaylen and nan + a cat cafe; jaylen + the lovers stadium; jaylen and nan + games; sebderrick ghost hunter au + highway ghosts; jaylen and tot + a car ride; kenfinn + something peaceful; jaylen + ghosts; mikederrick ghost hunter au + haunted house; allijay crime au + your bed after traveling; & sebderrick crime au + bruises.
Relationships: Jaylen Hotdogfingers & Derrick Kreuger, Jaylen Hotdogfingers & NaN, Jaylen Hotdogfingers & Tot Clark, Jaylen Hotdogfingers/Allison Abbott, Kennedy Loser/Finn James, Mike Townsend/Derrick Kreuger, Sebastian Telephone/Derrick Kreuger
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	1. allijay + reflections

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> requested by @919 on tumblr! he/him butch lesbian allie abbott headcanon is courtesy of my girlfriend luke, who's @dykesforcyclops on tumblr. takes place between jaylen's resurrection and season 7.

“Needed to feel like myself again,” Jaylen says in her smoke-hoarse voice, incineration and its aftermath still clinging stubbornly to the inside of her throat, her lungs, her entire body; she gestures, shakily, to the tangle of still-wet hair atop her head, bleached messily and dyed blood-red even messier. The dye-water drips down her forehead and onto her shoulders, still, and Allie has to do a triple-take to convince himself it isn’t blood.

Jaylen makes not-quite-eye-contact-but-close-enough through their reflections in the foggy bathroom mirror, and offers Allie a not-quite-smile that doesn’t reach anywhere near genuine — but close enough, still the closest thing to a real smile she’s given Allie in the three weeks since she came back, and Allie tucks it somewhere in the back of his heart like a treasured photograph he’s afraid the sun will fade into nothingness.

“Yeah,” Allie says; thinks of his own bleached-white hair that he cut off as soon as plans to get Jaylen back started leaving the realm of the _what-if_ and taking a concrete place in reality; “I get that. D’you want me to touch up the spots in the back you missed?” The dye bottle is still open on the counter; Allie reaches around Jaylen to put the cap back on it before it stains the entire bathroom red.

Jaylen shakes her head, leans her weight back against Allie. “No,” she says. Smiles that halfway-there smile again through the mirror — or maybe it’s just the fog distorting her reflection.


	2. derrick and jaylen + a record store

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> requested by [marn.](https://archiveofourown.org/users/baliset/pseuds/baliset) vague handwaves this is au where derrick never died or came back from the dead or something, idk, they're friends.

Jaylen drapes herself onto Derrick’s shoulder in the way she only does when she’s trying to be _truly_ obnoxious; she has to stand on tip-toes to do so, even in heels, but it’s worth it to see the scowl on his face and meet it with a camera-ready grin on her own. “Dude, seriously?” she says, grabbing the record he’s holding straight out of his hands; she only vaguely recognizes the band’s name as one Mike recommended to her back in the day, but vague recognition is enough to remember she’d hated them, and is ready to inflict her absolutely infallible music taste on everyone around her, wrinkling her nose and sticking the record back in the box it came from.

“Hey, gimme that —” Derrick snaps, elbowing Jaylen in the side hard; a laugh startles its way out of her throat and rings high-pitched through the store, earning her more than one dirty look from people just trying to shop for music in peace. “Asshole,” Derrick says, fishing through the box to re-find his record as Jaylen laughs beside him.

“Guilty as charged,” Jaylen says. Derrick finds the album and promptly smacks her atop the head with it, only making her laugh harder.


	3. kennedy and finn + ascension

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> requested by [rai!](https://archiveofourown.org/users/paopuleaf/pseuds/paopuleaf) kennedy is a butch lesbian and uses he/him pronouns, finn is a femme lesbian and uses she/her. takes place directly after s10 day x.

“So, we did it.”

Finn’s whisper ripples out into the darkened air of Kennedy’s room — Finn’s slept there since she climbed out of the bay six years ago, so really it’s _their_ room now, but she never really appended her name onto the possessive of it, hasn’t made it Kennedy-and-Finn’s. She wonders if she’ll get a chance to, now. Nobody knows what ascension means; everyone, especially the Crabs, have taken their turn to guess and be inevitably proven wrong, but Finn knows better than to wonder about these things — she’ll just spiral if she does, and who knows if she’ll be able to sink under the bay to calm her thoughts come morning?

The Crabs were bested viciously and swiftly by the Peanut’s team; it left them all struggling to catch their breath, all exhausted down to the bone, even hours later when Kennedy and Finn had stumbled their way back to Kennedy’s house and crawled into bed together — but even with that terrible tiredness and the hours that have passed since then, the moon’s reflection inching steadily across the water outside their window, Kennedy is awake when Finn finally speaks. He shifts so he’s halfway-sitting, and Finn echoes the movement, looking at him through the near-pitch-blackness of the room.

Kennedy doesn’t have to ask what she means; the Crabs have been working towards ascension for years, and only now, when it’s too late, have they stopped to wonder if that was a mistake. “Sure did,” he says softly; she can’t read the tone, whether he’s glad or terrified or remorseful or some shifting-swirling combination of all of them. (She can’t tell what she’s feeling about it all, either; her heart changes and changes and changes every time it beats, goes swiftly from fear to joy and back around again.)

He loops an arm around her shoulder, pulls her close. “Big day tomorrow,” he says, and she still can’t tell what’s behind it, but he holds onto her tightly and kisses the top of her head and she thinks, _well, whatever it is, at least we’ll be together this time._ “Should try to get some rest.”


	4. jaylen and nan + a cat cafe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> requested by [marn!](https://archiveofourown.org/users/baliset) nan characterization borrowed from [beeli.](https://beelijah.tumblr.com/) jaylen and nan are roommates.

They were told when they entered that there were thirteen cats at the cafe, though not all of them are always on the main floor at the same time. The woman at the counter had given them a look like she’d halfway-recognized them and decided she didn’t care enough to press the issue — which, _good,_ Jaylen thinks, because she really doesn’t need her reputation to be someone who goes to cat cafes frequently, you know? That’s not stopping her from coming in the first place, though, or from dragging her roommate along with her.

Anyways. Thirteen cats. Jaylen’s looking at their pictures on the wall, names written in neon sharpie underneath each photo, trying to match them up to the crowd that’s circled around NaN. She’s pretty sure she counts fifteen cats in the group that’s surrounded them; sure enough, there’s two she can’t match up to any photo, and she laughs at the thought that they might have wandered in from outside to join NaN’s — what, cat cult? (Do groups of cats have a name? A murder of crows, a flock of sheep, a glitch of cats — almost definitely not the proper name, but Jaylen figures anything that’s in a group with NaN’s gotta get a little weird, right?)

“What,” NaN asks, voice staticky in the middle of the syllable, looking up from the two cats that have settled on their lap to be pet. Both are purring loudly. She’s kinda shocked NaN hasn’t started echoing the sound.

“I think they like you,” Jaylen says, and laughs again.


	5. jaylen + the lovers' stadium

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> requested by [mads!](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crookedsaint/pseuds/crookedsaint) all the ones up till now were for the "3 sentence fic" thing that's been going around on tumblr. this is the only one that actually wound up being 3 sentences. whoops.

Jaylen only goes to the Lovers’ stadium in the dead of night, when the rest of the Lovers are asleep or partying or watching The Blachelor together or — whatever it is the Lovers do, during siesta; Jaylen hasn’t kept track and has no intention of catching up with them before the next season starts. The stadium lights hum against the silence, and the moon above has no awful halo harboring death around it.

Jaylen stands on the pitching mound and throws pitch after pitch into the darkness of the field, as if it means anything, as if she could improve without blessings or decrees or tearing into someone and taking their blood for herself — she throws until her arm is tired and then until she feels like something in her is going to break — she throws until the morning comes, and it is the only time she feels like San Francisco is her home.


	6. jaylen and nan + games

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> requested by [beeli,](https://beelijah.tumblr.com/) from whom i continue to borrow that real good nan characterization.

“So,” Jaylen says, breaks the silence of their living room that’s been uninterrupted but for the gentle buzz of the tv for an hour or two or three — who keeps track of time, really, over siesta? “You excited for the season to start again?”

It’s hard to make out movement when looking directly at NaN for too long is a great way to get a migraine, but she thinks she sees them shrug. She’s pretty sure that’ll be their only answer, but eventually they say: “We were made to play blaseball.”

Which wasn’t her question. “That wasn’t my question,” she says. They’ve been through that whole discussion before — whether or not she feels like she was literally created to play the splort (she _doesn’t,_ she had a childhood that’d hardly involved blaseball at all, she’d had a life before season one and refuses to think about the fact that someday, she may have a life post-blaseball, too) matters less than her bone-deep knowledge that being a pitcher is the only thing she _can_ do, and the only reason she’s alive, in ways both literal and metaphorical.

“I don’t know,” they say. “I’m not good at it.”

“Yeah,” Jaylen says, less of an agreement (though they both know NaN's star count could be _way_ better) and more of a brushing past it. “But do you like it?”

NaN's quiet another long moment. Maybe it was a shitty question, Jaylen thinks. the game’s fucked up both their lives in such visceral, identity-warping ways. god fucking knows her own feelings on whether or not she still _likes blaseball_ change by the hour; she wants to, she wants to like the thing she dedicates her life to _so badly,_ she wants to find some love in her heart for the thing she’s died for two times over. It isn’t that simple. Nothing in their lives is, really.

“I don’t know,” NaN says again.

“Well, _I'_ _m_ excited,” Jaylen says, breezing past all _that_ with a wave of her hand. “Siesta’s been boring as fuck; I just wanna play again.” She pauses. “And hey, who knows, maybe we’ll both flicker onto a team that’s actually any good.”


	7. sebderrick + highway ghosts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> requested by [marn.](https://archiveofourown.org/users/baliset) no-splorts au where seb is a highway ghost derrick keeps running into.

It’s the sixth time they’ve met — not that Derrick’s keeping track — and Sebastian’s given up the pretense of standing by the side of the highway and begun popping right into the passenger seat instead, Derrick’s van still going eighty miles an hour with its extra semi-spectral passenger in tow.

“Jesus fuck,” Derrick says, eyes off the road for a second so he can bat at the air where Seb’s shoulder would be if he were a living, breathing person; he always forgets the pins-and-needles static feeling that comes with his hand going through a ghost until it’s too late. “You’re gonna give me an actual heart attack one of these days, you know that?”

“Hi, Derrick,” Seb says, doing an absolutely terrible job at hiding his bubbling-up laughter. “It’s nice to see you, too.”

“You’re trying to kill me.” Derrick’s voice is dry. He’s holding back a smile that he refuses to let show because that would be letting Seb win, somehow. “You’re trying to get yourself company in the ghost business.”

“You’re way too pretty to die,” Seb says, in that quick, offhand way that Derrick knows means he didn’t really think before he said it, just let the words come tumbling out.

By the time Derrick turns his head to stare at Sebastian, he’s blinked back out of existence, and Derrick has to swerve to get his now-empty van back on the right side of the road.


	8. jaylen and tot + car ride

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> requested by [rai,](https://archiveofourown.org/users/paopuleaf/pseuds/paopuleaf) who's also responsible for how i characterize tot + tot and jaylen's friendship! they're friends who also try to kill each other sometimes because neither of them can actually die. it's a healthy friendship dynamic, really.

“Did you know NaN can just —” Jaylen waves her hands a little, like that’ll get her point across any better than words, “— _appear_ places, apparently? Like, they don’t have to suffer through airports or long-ass road trips with their dumbass fake-mummy friends —”

“Thanks,” Tot says, deadpan as usual.

“I’m just _saying,_ if I could just fuckin’ appear back in San Francisco instead of having to hitch a ride from you, I would. I feel like roommate privilege means they should be able to bring me along when they teleport or whatever, but _nope._ We’ve been driving for _how_ fucking long?”

“How should I know.”

“And we’ve still got _ten fucking hours_ left, according to Gloogle Maps? Why the fuck did we think road tripping this was a good idea?” She props her boots up on the dash, rolls down the window to smoke out of it, and firmly ignores Tot’s glare for both of these things. One would think she’d be nicer, after ze agreed to drive her and all her shit back to SF before the season starts — but Tot knew what ze was getting into. “If you expect me to stay awake this whole time, you’re shit outta luck.”

“If you fall asleep, I’ll pull you out of the car and run you over. Again.”

“Damn, fucking harsh,” Jaylen says, but she’s grinning. Neither of them can die, at least not outside of games; might as well have fun with the threats. “Alright. Ten hours. You better have some good playlists ready to go. If I hear one fuckin’ Bleethoven I’m launching myself out of the car myself.”


	9. kenfinn + something peaceful

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> requested by [oliver](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tenworms). kennedy's a butch lesbian and uses he/him pronouns, finn's a femme lesbian and uses she/her pronouns. they're in love.

In an old-fashioned clawfoot tub found down a series of endless hallways connected to more endless hallways, Finn James contorts herself to be completely underwater, eyes closed, breathing through her gills. She hears Kennedy knock on the door as if in a dream, distant and hazy and muffled by the inches of water over her head; she thinks about not replying at all, staying underwater as long as she’s able — until the end of siesta, until games start again, until they are finally, finally, finally brought back Down and she can swim in the Bay again — but she lifts her chin above the water and echoes Kennedy’s knocks against the tile of the wall, inviting him in.

“Hey,” Kennedy says, shutting the door behind him and sitting down on the damp tile floor, leaning against the side of the tub. “Haven’t seen you in a while. I know it’s been rough for everyone up here, but I — well, I wanted to make sure you were okay?”

Finn lets herself sink again. Her eyes stay above water, watching Kennedy’s hand tap-tap-tap against the tub’s porcelain. “I just miss it,” she says, though her voice is muted and it sends air bubbles to the surface. “I miss it and miss it and miss it.”

“Baltimore?”

“The Bay — the _water._ There’s no water up here, Ken, not like that, and I know — I know — I know I probably shouldn’t miss it so much, after drowning for so long. But it was _peaceful._ Everything was just… so peaceful.”

She knows Kennedy can’t understand, not quite — no one can, not really, the feeling of being miles beneath the sea and wrapped in the pressure of all that ocean, lulled off to sleep by a warm blanket that contains such endless life. (There’s a shade of that peace in being held by Kennedy, sometimes, but other times she doesn’t want to be touched at all, and other times, still, the mere act of being in open air dries out her skin and makes her want to scream, if only she could get enough water in her lungs to do so.)

Kennedy turns his hand palm-up against the side of the tub, and Finn thinks for a moment before placing her hand in his, squeezing it gently.

“What can I do?” Kennedy asks. He’s so earnest in his need to help everyone, in his love, and sometimes it makes Finn feel like she’s undergoing open heart surgery, like he’s peering into something inside her no one else could ever see. There is a comfort there, much like drowning.

Finn breathes, quietly, in through her gills and out through her mouth, watching the air move through the water. “Just stay?”

“Of course,” Kennedy says, without a moment’s hesitation. “Always.”


	10. jaylen + ghosts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> requested by [tam](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marquis/pseuds/marquis)!

There was a time Seattle loved her back.

And it’s hard to imagine it, now, when she looks at the only place she’s ever called home and can only feel the ways in which its coldness resembles death, 40º and raining less like water falling and more like water hanging in the air, like being thousands of miles under the ocean. The darkness would send her into a blind panic except for the constant noise of traffic and life outside her window; still, she doesn’t know if she remembers how to sleep with so much sound. Or rather, she doesn’t know if she remembers how to sleep at all.

It’s not guilt that keeps her awake but fear, that freezing-cold terror that if she isn’t _enough_ she’ll die again and they sure as fuck won’t save her a second time, she’ll just lose more and more of herself until there is nothing left of Jaylen but an arm to pitch with. It’s getting easier — every batter she sends to their own watery grave drags her further out of the ground, gravesoil mixing in with ashes on the field. People give her a wide berth, now. Nobody — ballplayers and civilians alike — wants to know what will happen if they get too close; her death is contagious, after all.

A life for a life, except it’s more like a half-dozen lives by now, and she’s still not all the way alive, so it won’t be stopping anytime soon. A reporter asked her yesterday if their ghosts haunt her, and he’d said it like it was half a joke. She didn’t know how to say that the only ghost around here was herself, so she’d laughed instead, baring all her teeth.


	11. mikederrick + haunted house

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> requested by [mads!](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crookedsaint/pseuds/crookedsaint) au where mike and derrick are buzzfeed unsolved-style ghost hunters, except derrick gets drowned by an evil swamp while they're hunting ghosts. yknow, as you do.

“It’s not fucking haunted,” Derrick says, walking back into the dust-ridden living room with a sweep of his flashlight directly into Mike’s eyes.

“Hey, c’mon, watch where you’re pointing that, you’re gonna blind me,” and maybe Mike’s complaining a little too much, given that they only got here an hour ago and have a whole night ahead of them in a house that is _definitely_ haunted, no matter what bullshit Derrick says. “We’ve barely even looked around, how would you even know that fast?”

“Ghost powers.” Derrick’s completely deadpan. Loosens his grip on the physical world enough for the flashlight to pass through his hand and clatter on the ground, for dramatic effect; it echoes around the room just a little too loudly and a little too long for comfort, and they both pretend Mike doesn’t jump out of his fucking skin at the noise. 

(Like Mike needed the reminder that Derrick’s _technically_ been dead for months, and they’re still doing the stupid ghost show anyways, because — well, what else can they do?)

“Right,” Mike says, rolling his eyes, pretending he didn’t take a second too long to reply. “Hey, _technically,_ anywhere we go is haunted.”

“Which means we _could_ be shooting this inside the van. Lived there long enough for it to count as a haunted house, _and_ it’s got a hundred percent more CD players than this shithole.”

Mike snorts. _“‘Ghost hunters visit infamous van haunted by ghost of asshole musician’_ isn’t gonna get many clicks.”

“Not with that awful title,” Derrick says, grinning. Moves across the room to sit beside Mike, humming under his breath as he starts helping pull equipment out of their bags. (Mike’s noticed Derrick does that, a lot, when he needs to keep himself tangible. He hasn’t asked about it. Just noticed.) “Like ‘ _ghost hunters fail to find ghosts in old-ass axe murder house’_ is gonna get more.”

“You’re right.” Mike sighs, all melodrama, and leans against Derrick’s side. “Our careers are doomed. We should’ve stuck to music.”


	12. allijay + your bed after traveling (crime au)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> requested by [marn!](https://archiveofourown.org/users/baliset)
> 
> organized crime au, in which jaylen is a mob boss with a cool eyepatch, and allie is her girlfriend who tries very hard to stay uninvolved in all of jaylen's criminal activities. as always, he/him butch allie is courtesy of my girlfriend luke!

Allie knows better than to ask where Jaylen has been the past month. The half-manic grin on her face when she walks through the door is more than enough to tell him that he wouldn’t like the answer; she’s washed her hands since letting herself into the house, Allie heard the water running in the bathroom and sees Jaylen drying them against the fabric of her leggings, but Allie knows if he looks closely there’ll be blood under her fingernails, still. 

He won’t look closely. Easier that way. Plausible deniability, or something; Jaylen claimed, during those years she was laying low, that she was out of the crime business for good, and if Allie doesn’t ask, they can both pretend that was ever true and could still be true.

(Allie keeps a bat beside his bed in case Jaylen’s work follows her home, but it hasn’t happened yet, and he hopes it doesn’t. Hopes it for his own safety, for hers — hopes she can keep the ranch as a soft place to land when she needs it, free of the danger she thrives on — hopes he doesn’t have to confront her violent past-present-future head-on.)

Jaylen throws her jacket on the floor, doesn’t even bother to drape it over the chair in the corner where Allie’s denim jackets lay neatly folded, and throws her own body onto the bed. Haphazard, like she doesn’t care where her limbs end up: arm halfway over Allie’s torso, legs diagonal across the rest of the bed, like she’s trying to take up as much space as she possibly can, carving out room for herself in Allie’s home as if he wouldn’t have left that space for her anyways. She props herself up on an elbow and leans down to kiss Allie. It’s a sharp kiss that’s trying to disguise itself as soft. Jaylen’s always been all angles. Allie’s not sure if he can taste blood in her mouth, or if it’s all his imagination, conjuring up illusions to fill in the blanks of things he doesn’t want to know.

“Welcome home,” Allie says, letting himself smile up at Jaylen. From so close, he can see bruises going sour-green against her skin, signs of a fight. He doesn’t ask about it, but makes a mental note to be gentle.

Jaylen kisses him again, and just as quickly, she’s dropped onto the pillow beside him with a contented sigh. “Ugh, I’ve missed your bed,” she says. “Shitty fuckin’ motels just aren’t the same.”

If Allie listens closely, he can hear it as _I’ve missed you,_ instead. He lets himself do that. There’s probably no harm in it.


	13. sebderrick + the tender ache of pressing against a bruise (crime au)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> requested by an anon! more crime au, this time starring seb (mob boss jessica telephone's brother, with a huge target on his back because of that) and derrick (formerly part of jaylen's gang, sent to kill seb ages ago, ended up half-dead on seb's doorstep due to unrelated injuries and nursed back to health, is now basically seb's bodyguard).

“I’m fine, Derrick,” Sebastian says. Whines, really, a petulant squeak in his voice; Derrick can picture his pout without looking, and he’s _really_ not sure when he started being able to do that, when he memorized the minutiae of Seb’s expressions, but that doesn’t matter, not right now, so he tucks the thought away and walks back into the living room, floor creaking beneath his steps and bag of freezer-burned vegetables in hand.

“You got kidnapped,” Derrick points out, for what feels like the fiftieth time. “Again.” He sits down beside Seb, presses the bag up to the bruise blooming blue-ugly on Sebastian’s cheek. Sebastian winces.

“And you saved me,” he says, bringing his own hands up to hold the makeshift icepack. Derrick doesn’t drop his own right away, just lets Seb’s hands sit on top of his for a moment, a warm contrast to the freezing cold. Just to make sure Seb has a hold on it.

There’s a lot Derrick could say to that. That he should’ve kept whoever Jaylen hired this time from taking Seb to begin with; that it was stupid of him to think he could go to the grocery store and Seb would still be safe by the time he got back. Half of him wants to remind Sebastian that he was sent to kill him in the first place, like that long-forgotten mission will soften the sharp fluttering of butterfly wings in his stomach at the way Seb’s looking at him, like he’s some knight in shining armor and not a killer.

It’s a miracle Sebastian wasn’t hurt more than a couple scrapes and bruises. It’s a miracle Sebastian’s still alive.

“You could’ve died.” Derrick keeps his voice carefully flat, scanning Seb’s skin for more injuries he might have missed, not looking him in the eyes. There’s a bit of blood at the corner of Seb’s mouth, remnants of a split lip. There’s some bruising on his wrists where they’d tied him too tightly. There’s a bit of blood splatter on the sleeve of his shirt, but Derrick is half-sure that’s from when he’d shot the guy who’d kidnapped Seb, not from any injuries Seb himself sustained.

Seb shrugs. “There’s been a lot of times I could’ve died,” he says, like that’s not an _issue._ Sure, it’s to be expected, with who his sister is, but — Derrick finds himself wishing fiercely that it wasn’t the case, that Seb didn’t have to worry about that. “I’m alright. I’m barely even hurt!” 

Sebastian pauses for long enough that Derrick’s opening his mouth to say something else — he doesn’t know _what,_ he just doesn’t like the silence — but then Seb’s speaking again, softly. “Were you worried?”

Derrick looks up at Seb’s face, and finds it heartwrenchingly genuine; his eyes are wide (or, in the case of the one that’s bruised-up and swelling, as wide as it can get), the start of a smile tugging at the corners of his split lips, and Derrick doesn’t even think before saying “Obviously I was worried, dipshit.”

His hand is still on sandwiched between the icepack and Seb’s hand. That, more than anything else, makes it easy to make a hasty decision and lean forward, squeezing his eyes shut, pressing a clumsy kiss against Seb’s lips.

“Ow,” Seb says, and Derrick jolts backwards. If not for Seb’s tight grip on his hand, he probably would’ve left the room entirely, made some excuse about patrolling the yard just in case Jaylen sends someone else to try again where the last half-dozen have failed, but he can only move as far back as his arm can reach.

“Sorry,” Derrick says, prying his eyes open to find that Seb is — smiling at him. Huh. “I shouldn’t have —”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Seb cuts in, a half-frantic look in his eyes. “I’m just — you know, a little bit bruised, so —”

“Oh,” Derrick says, feeling very, very stupid.

 _“So,”_ Seb continues, smiling, wincing at how the smile pulls on his lips but not _stopping_. “After I heal up a bit. Tomorrow, maybe. We can try that again?”

He punctuates it by squeezing Derrick’s hand, and Derrick nods, slowly. “Okay,” he says. “Guess that counts as motivation for you to not get kidnapped again before then.”

“Or motivation for you to save me again,” Seb says, and Derrick laughs.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! feel free to request stuff on tumblr @ [rogueumpire](https://rogueumpire.tumblr.com/)! leave a comment! etc!


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